After a three-week trial, a 12-member panel is expected to begin deliberating Tuesday. Smith, 27, is charged with first-degree murder in the brutal slaying of downtown shopkeeper Elham Dashti.

“You have every right as members of this community to despise him,” defence counsel Colin Adams noted in his closing address Monday. “But you must judge Patrick Smith dispassionately.”

Adams told jurors his client was “so intoxicated” and affected by drugs at the time of the attack that could not have intended to commit murder.

“He’s a weak, addicted man,” he said. “He did not have the mindset to realize that what he did in that brief period of time would kill her.”

Earlier in the trial, Smith testified he was coming down from an all-night cocaine binge when he set out to rob Dashti’s store, High Times. He also said he consumed alcohol and steroids in the hours before the May 2010 attack.

Though Smith has admitted to killing the 31-year-old mother in the robbery, he maintains he didn’t do it intentionally – a claim the Crown disputes. Dashti was found strangled, beaten and left for dead in the basement of the King Street store, which she owned with her husband, Mo.

Assistant Crown attorney Janet Booy reminded the jury of the care Smith took in targeting Dashti’s shop – even tracing wires across the ceiling to ensure they weren’t connected to surveillance cameras.

“If he had the capacity at the outset, he had the capacity all along,” she argued in closing. “He wasn’t struggling with being under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”

Booy also attempted to show Smith’s actions constituted forcible confinement. This is key to the Crown’s case because one of the reasons for which murder is categorized first-degree is if it occurs while committing another offence, such as kidnapping, sexual assault or forcible confinement.

“She didn’t go into that basement voluntarily,” Booy told the panel. “All along, he’s confining her in the sleeper hold.”

Booy reminded the jury of the grave injuries Smith inflicted, including ligature marks and broken bones in Dashti’s face and jaw.

“Her left ear was partially torn from her head,” Booy said, adding Smith was “well aware” that the beating he undertook could kill her.

Anticipating the Crown’s argument, Adams recalled expert testimony which supported links between cocaine use and suspiciousness, irritability and agitation. Smith’s steroid use, he added, could be tied to increased aggression.

“Patrick Smith was a man who, in terms of human interaction, did not understand his own strength,” he said.